Editing Surrogate key (section)

===Inadvertent disclosure===
Proprietary information can be leaked if surrogate keys are generated sequentially. By subtracting a previously generated sequential key from a recently generated sequential key, one could learn the number of rows inserted during that time period. This could expose, for example, the number of transactions or new accounts per period. For example see [[German tank problem]].

There are a few ways to overcome this problem:

* increase the sequential number by a random amount;
* generate a random key such as a [[Universally unique identifier|UUID]].